Timetable:

2.00 Gather in St Barnabas Cathedral

Welcome and Introduction: Graham Greene and his conversion to the Catholic faith

2.30 in the Cathedral Hall for Dr Criena Mansfield, The Virtue of Disloyalty

3.30 tea and cake

4.00 Graham Greene in Nottingham, with Michael Eaton

4.40 Fictionalising Greene, with David Belbin

5.30 Q & A with Jim Moran, University of Nottingham

6.00 Drinks

6.15 “The Matter of the Heart” St Barnabas Creative Writing Group

7.00 close

Neil is a fixture on the local and the national small press scene. Andy had the temerity to move away from Nottingham recently, but we welcome him back, while Char has recently moved into our area. A sensible move.

Neil’s latest collection is Can’t Take Me Anywhere, which, like so much of Neil’s poetry explores working class life in this city.  Neil Fulwood co-edited More Raw Material, a collection of essays, poems and short fiction, published as a tribute to Alan Sillitoe. The new collection extends Fulwood’s wideranging, keen-eyed accounts of millennial Britain, and his witty, dexterous command of form. It’s as bracing as it is enjoyable.

Andy will be reading from This Noise is Free, a book about buskers and busking, drawing on the author’s experience as a street musician. It’s located somewhere between the rainbow and the gutter, between pigeons and gargoyles, slaveholder mansions and charity shops. He is an unofficial archivist of life on the streets, from Matlock to Memphis, exploring their characters, music and unexpected camaraderie.

Char  has won umpteen awards in poetry, short fiction, screen-writing, and in playwrighting for both radio and stage. She has, twice, been awarded the Hawthornden Fellowship.  She’s had five poetry collections and a short story collection published. Her plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and seven stage plays produced.  ‘March’s poems made me pay attention – and laugh. Wry, pithy and downright funny, Char March’s new collection unpacks into serial astonishment: each poem doorsteps you with its distinct voice and attitude.’ Graham Mort

Tickets: £4.00 on the door (£2.00 students), including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Join us to discuss Anthony Doerr’s book of short stories (this might be the first time our book group has ever discussed short stories!)

From the author of the novel All the Light We Cannot See, a collection of stories about memory: the source of meaning and coherence in our lives, the fragile thread that connects us to ourselves and to others. In the title story, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman’s secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life. In ‘The River Nemunas’, a teenaged orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania, and discovers a world in which myth becomes real. And in `Afterworld,’ a woman who escaped the Holocaust is haunted by visions of her childhood friends in Germany, yet finds solace in the tender ministrations of her grandson.

Five Leaves book group is open to all. Come to one only, or a few or all of our meetings – there’s no commitment other than to read the book and discuss it.

We don’t mind where you obtain the book (we love libraries…) but we do offer 15% discount generally on book group books on the lead up to each event.

For the avoidance of doubt, the author will not be present!

Free, refreshments provided.  Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Anarchism routinely gets a bad press. It’s usually seen as meaning chaos and disorder or even nothing at all. And yet, from Occupy Wall Street to Pussy Riot, Noam Chomsky to David Graeber, this philosophical and political movement is as relevant as ever. Different strands of anarchism, from individualism to collectivism, follow certain structures and a shared sense of purpose: a belief in freedom and working towards collective good without the interference of the state. In this talk, political theorist Ruth Kinna traces the tumultuous history of anarchism, starting with thinkers and activists such as Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman and through key events like the Paris Commune and the Haymarket affair. Ruth reveals what makes a supposedly chaotic movement particularly adaptable and effective over centuries – and what we can learn from it.

Ruth Kinna teaches at the University of Loughborough and has written many books on anarchism.

Tickets: £4.00 (£2.00 students) including refreshments.

Note – this session will book up so it is essential to let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

The third Nottingham Radical Bookfair… 30 tables from new and second hand booksellers, publishers and organisations and a full supporting programme of talks.

Stalls already booked by Five Leaves, Nottingham People’s History, Northern Herald Books (second hand), Anarchist Communist Group, Ex-Libris (second hand), Verso Books, Notts and Derby Labour History Society, Morning Star, Revolutionary Praxis, Jermy and Westerman (second hand), Sparrow’s Nest Archive, Global Books Marketing, Pluto Press, AK Press/Freedom Press/PM Press, UNITE – Nottingham community branch, Paul Waplington Prints. Women’s Centre Library, Asylum Magazine

Come along for an hour or the whole day. Free, no need to book.

2019 Events:

11.00-12.00

Andrew Graves – author of Welcome to the Cheap Seats: silver screen portrayals of the British working class. An illustrated talk with a strong Nottingham interest.

12.15-1.15

Anamik Saha – author of Race and the Cultural Industries – talks on Race, Media and Social Justice.  The question of media’s representation of racial and ethnic minorities – especially in popular culture – can appear trivial for some anti-racists/Leftists. Drawing from his book Race and the Cultural Industries Anamik Saha argues that how media treats minorities is a matter of social justice. In doing so he provides a critique of ‘diversity’, which dominates current media and cultural policy agendas.

Kerry Hudson – author of Lowborn: growing up, getting away and returning to Britain’s poorest towns

1.30-2.30

David Bell – author of Reds, Rebels and Radicals of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. An introduction to, reminder of, and celebration of our local heroes.

Prison: A Survival Guide – with contributors to this Penguin book, which sold out in ten days!

2.45-3.45

Priyamvada Gopal (Priya) – author of Insurgent Empire: anticolonial resistance and British dissent

Ra Page: editor of Resist: stories of uprising, with Steve Chambers and Karline Smith reading and discussing their contributions on the Battle of Cable Street and the Notting Hill Riots of 1958.

4.00-5.00

Tim Gee – author of Why I Am a Pacifist. Pacifism isn’t about being passive. Quaker activist Tim Gee shares why.

Tim Gee said: “We are seeing some of the catastrophic effects of climate change already. In such light the resources governments currently spent on preparing for war would be best used on  on humanitarian relief efforts to assist those worst affected. More broadly, a domestic transition away from fossil fuels would without doubt make the world a safer place, as such measures would change the current pattern of wars for oil and limit climate breakdown. We cannot miss that current tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia Centre on oil”  Since September Gee has been speaking in churches, bookshops and community halls, combining personal testimony from his work as a campaigner with reflections from research into his new book ‘Why I am a Pacifist’.

Janine Booth – author of Minnie Lansbury: suffragette, socialist, rebel councillor – this event is organised by Notts and Derby Labour History Society

Cafe on site. The cherry crumble last year was memorable.

A Bread and Roses event

Nottingham Radical Bookfair is supported by Nottinghamshire UNISON

The event is free, including the talks

A warm welcome back to Bloodaxe poet Matthew Caley, who will be reading from Trawlerman’s Turquoise,  his sixth collection, which features various seemingly recherché elements – telepathy, Madame Blavatsky, epistolary novels, muse worship, Balzac’s coffee addiction and Thomas Merton’s accidental electrocution amongst them – not always as straightforward ‘subject matter’, but caught up in the backdraft of the poems’ acceleration.

Matthew will be reading with Ruth Hobson (many people in Nottingham will know her as Ruth Shelton) – and any resemblance between the poets is not coincidental as they are siblings! Ruth will be reading from her first collection, Arthur Talks, which was inspired by her work with homeless people in Nottingham.

Tickets: £4.00 on the door (£2.00 students). Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

(Note – this talk involves a discussion about sexual violence and trauma)

Aged 15 and on track to be an Olympic gymnast, Lucia Osborne-Crowley was violently raped on a night out. The injuries she sustained that evening ended her gymnastics career, and eventually manifested in life-long chronic illnesses, which medical professionals now believe can be caused by untreated trauma.

In a brilliantly researched and deeply affecting essay, Osborne-Crowley invites the reader/listener to join her on decade-long journey to recovery: from the immediate aftermath of the assault, through years of misdiagnosis, to the solace and strength she found in writers like Elena Ferrante.

The author’s investigations reveal profound societal failures – of law, justice, education and the healthcare system. An essential contribution to the field of literature on assault and trauma, I Choose Elena argues that it is only through empathy than we can begin to address the self-perpetuating cycle of sexual violence.

Tickets: £4.00 (£2.00 students), including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

John Burns is a mountaineer, actor and writer.    For over 40 years John has walked and climbed the hills of Scotland whilst also making occasional trips to the Alps, the Pyrenes and the Canadian Rockies. An expert ice climber, he was also a member of the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team, and has taken part in numerous rescues in the Highlands. More recently he has rediscovered his love for remote bothies (isolated mountain shelters) and regularly visits the wilder places of his Scottish home. In his first two bestselling books, The Last Hillwalker and Bothy Tales, John D. Burns invited readers to join him in the hills and wild places of Scotland. In Sky Dance, his new novel, he returns to that world to ask fundamental questions about how we relate to this northern landscape – while raising a laugh or two along the way. Anyone who has stood and gazed at the majesty of the Scottish mountains will know this place and want to return to it. Now, as wild land is threatened like never before, it’s time we asked ourselves what kind of future we want for the Highlands.

Tickets: £4.00 including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Insiders/Outsiders is a year long project exploring the impact of German Jewish refugees on art and culture in Britain. Five Leaves’ previous contributions to this festival have been about art. In this talk, Jenny Swann, a local poet and publisher, starts from the home and family history – her late father being Walter Elkan, an economist who specialised in the developing economies of Africa who arrived here in 1938.

Jenny will explore what it meant to be a German Jewish refugee in Britain, trying to make your way in another language, cut off from your homeland, part of a community of exiles who were encouraged never to speak German in public, worried about those who were left behind…

This talk will include illustrations of archive material of the period, personal and public.

Free, tea and sachertorte (Austrian/German cake often served in bookshops and cafes, and popular with exiles!) provided.

Booking essential via events@fiveleaves.co.uk as our capacity at this event will be lower than normal.

We are pleased to invite you to the launch of volume five of this annual anthology of fantastical writing, recently seen at the national FantasyCon – the latest in the popular series of dark fairy tales for adults.

Contributors to this edition include Rosie Garland, Aliya Whitely and Angela Readman, together with a host of writers from this region. Edited by Teika Bellamy for Mother’s Milk.

Homemade fairy cakes will be on offer!

Full line up to follow.

Free, refreshments included. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

All across the world, irreplaceable habitats are under threat. Unique ecosystems of plants and animals are being destroyed by human intervention. From the tiny to the vast, from marshland to meadow, and from Kent to Glasgow to India to America, they are disappearing.

This illustrated talk is not only a love letter to the haunting beauty of these landscapes and the wild species that call them home, including nightingales, lynxes, hornbills, redwoods and elephant seals, it is also a timely reminder of the vital connections between humans and nature, and all that we stand to lose in terms of wonder and wellbeing.

Exploring treasured coral reefs and remote mountains, tropical jungle and ancient woodland, urban allotments and tallgrass prairie, Julian Hoffman traces the stories of threatened places around the globe through the voices of local communities and grassroots campaigners as well as professional ecologists and academics.

In association with Penguin Books.

Tickets: £4.00 (students/unemployed £2.00) including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Nottingham’s premier poetry publisher hits 25… Established and run by John Lucas from Beeston, Shoestring has published over 400 books, mosty of poetry but including some fiction, some memoir and some books of essays. His authors have come from everywhere from Radford to Tasmania and all stops in between, with a number of books in translation.

Today some guest poets, on and off the Shoestring list, will read from the best of that 25 years, and we’ll also remember a few Shoestring poets who have gone to that big poetry reading in the sky over the last quarter century.

Free, refreshments provided

Booking essential on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Emilie Pine speaks powerfully from her painful experience of the emotional labour of caring for her alcoholic father, on the grief of miscarriage, on the social taboos around menstrual blood and female pain, on the ways young women use their own bodies as weapons against themselves. Her writing and presentations are never self-pitying, and, ultimately, embrace joy and hope.

Emilie Pine is Associate Professor of Modern Drama at University College Dublin, Ireland. She has published widely as an academic and critic. Notes to Self is her first collection of personal essays and the winner of The Irish Book Awards Book of the Year.

Emilie will be in conversation with Deirdre O’Byrne (Nottingham Irish Studies/Five Leaves Bookshop)

Tickets: £5 including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Join us to launch Megan Taylor’s new novel We Wait, published by Eyrie Press

“The wealthy Crawleys can’t abide a scandal, so when fifteen-year-old Maddie’s behaviour causes concern, she’s packed off to the family’s country estate, along with her best friend, Ellie. But while Maddie is resentful, Ellie is secretly thrilled.  A whole summer at Greywater House, which she’s heard so much about – and with Maddie, who she adores… 

But from the moment the girls arrive, it’s clear there’s more to the house and the family than Ellie could ever have imagined.  Maddie’s aunt, Natalie, and her bedridden grandmother are far from welcoming – and something has been waiting at Greywaters, something that flits among the shadows and whispers in the night.

As the July heat rises and the girls’ relationship intensifies, the house’s ghosts can’t be contained, and it isn’t just Ellie who has reason to be afraid.  Three generations of the Crawley family must face their secrets when past and present violently collide.”

Free, refreshments included. Let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

The late BS Johnson was a writer of experimental fiction. His best known book was The Unfortunates. To celebrate fifty years since first publication the local theatre company Excavate has organised a reading tour of the city.

The Unfortunates is a book in a box, with chapters printed as pamphlets that you can read in any order as long as you read the first chapter first and the last chapter last. There is no continuous narrative but the same characters appear throughout. The book is set in an unnamed city and starts “But I know this city!”. But we know the city is Nottingham and today’s event takes place all over the city where individuals and groups can wander round the readings in any order, taking in as many or as few as you like. At each venue individuals and groups will be read sections of the book, of between one and ten minutes, by volunteer readers (which includes BS Johnson’s biographer, Jonathan Coe, and us!).

Fuller details of the venues and timings to follow.

This is an opportunity for you to “know this city” and take part in BS Johnson’s experimental world.

Five Leaves open book group discusses Ishiguro’s first novel.

Ishiguro tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer night in Nagasaki, when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But then as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko – a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy – the memories take on a disturbing cast.

We don’t mind where you source the book, but in the lead up to the meetings we offer 15% discount generally off book group books. Our book group is quite open so you can attend one, a few or every meeting or just drop in when you fancy discussing the book of the evening.

For the avoidance of doubt, Ishiguro will not be attending the event!

Free, refreshments provided. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Andrew Whitehead will bring us up to date with what is happening in Kashmir, and the roots of the current conflict. Kashmir is a land split between India, Pakistan and China, with many Kashmiris making their homes in Nottingham, mostly still with family links “back home”.

Andrew Whitehead is a former head of news at the BBC World Service and the author of the major work on Kashmir in the past A Mission in Kashmir, now available as a free download.

He is an Honorary Professor at the Institute for Asia-Pacific Studies at the University of Nottingham. He is also the author, joint author and joint editor of several unrelated books for Five Leaves Publications including London Fictions, the series of books on Curious London and a book on Alexander Baron.

Andrew teaches journalism in India and has contributed to many Indian magazines.

This event is free,  refreshments are provided. Please reserved your place on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Readings from Alan Baker and David Duncombe, in association with Nottingham Poetry Society

Alan Baker will be talking about the work the French poet Yves Bonnefoy and the Morrocan Abdellatif Laâbi, and reading his own and others’ translations of their poetry.

Tickets: £4.00 (£2.00 students and Nottingham Poetry Society members).

Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Carcanet Press, one of the leading poetry publishers in the English-speaking world, turns fifty this year. This event brings together four Nottingham-based Carcanet poets for a night of readings and celebration, in association with the Nottingham Creative Writing Hub. A free, celebratory, limited-edition pamphlet will be available for all who attend the event.

Rory Waterman is Senior Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University. His first collection of poetry, Tonight the Summer’s Over (Carcanet, 2013), was a Poetry BookSociety Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Prize; his second, Sarajevo Roses (Carcanet, 2017), was shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize for Second Collections.

Matthew Welton was born in Nottingham in 1969, and is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham. He received the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize for The Book of Matthew (Carcanet, 2003), which was a Guardian Book of the Year, and his other collections are We needed coffee but… (Carcanet, 2009) and The Number Poems (Carcanet, 2016).

Gregory Woods has published five collections with Carcanet: We Have the Melon (1992), May I Say Nothing (1998), The District Commissioner’s Dreams (2002), Quidnunc (2007) and An Ordinary Dog (2011). He is Professor Emeritus of Gay and Lesbian Studies at Nottingham Trent University.

Becky Cullen was a winner of the 2017/18 Poetry Business International Poetry Book and Pamphlet competition, leading to publication of the Smith|Doorstop pamphlet Majid Sits in a Tree and Sings (2018). A selection of her poems is included in the anthology New Poetries VII (Carcanet, 2018). She is M3C postdoctoral Cultural Economy Engagement Fellowship at NTU.

We will be joined by Michael Schmidt, who set up Carcanet in 1969 and has run it ever since.

Nicola Monaghan celebrates her wedding anniversary with the launch of her new book  as Niki Valentine. It’s set in Nottingham, over on Cliff Road, just the other side of Broad Marsh centre (in fact, the area formerly known as Narrow Marsh).

“Hardened by ten years on the murder squad, DNA analyst Doctor Sian Love has seen it all. So when she finds human remains in the basement of her new home, she knows the drill. Except this time it’s different. This time, it’s personal… A page-turning cold case investigation.”

Nicola Monaghan writes under her own name and as Niki Valentine. She teaches creative writing at De Montfort University.

We don’t often invite people to wedding anniversaries, at least not when human remains are involved, but sometimes we make exceptions. Come and join us.

Free, refreshments provided. Let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk